image missing
Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028064
THE SOCIO-ENVIRO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM (SEES)
and
TrueValueMetrics (TVM)
Thoughts on how accountancy and economics
need to adjust to have future relevance and utility.
TVM SITE NAVIGATION
HOME SiteNav Alpha Chrono Briefs SEES capitals activities actors place products SI SS metrics TPB
.
TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIPT NAVIGATION
S-01 S-02 S-03 S-04 S-05 S-06 S-07 S-08 S-09 S-10 S-11 S-12 S-13 S-14 S-15
S-16 S-17 S-18 S-19 S-20 S-21 S-22 S-23 S-24 S-25 S-26 S-27 S-28 S-29 S-30
Contents Last S-03 Next S-05
.
SECTION 4
IS VICTOR DAVIS HANSEN WRONG ABOUT
THE ELITES' WAR ON THE WORKING CLASS?
Version 1 ... February 2025

  • spectacle but it's a spectacle that has its real Roots again I'm just keeping track of
  • all the things we're going to be coming back to I I assume that a big portion of our conversation will be about the end
  • of the American Empire and where we are with Trump right now but now I I would

  • 25:25
  • Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong About the Elites’ War on the Working Class?
    •
  • like to take this narrative you've given about the election being explained by a
  • desire for Change and the inability of Harris and the Democratic party to provide that I'd like to connect that to
  • what Victor Davis Hansen said and see if you see any resonance between the two ideas the way that Victor accounted for
  • the election is he sees it I think as part of a larger culture war between on
  • the one hand what he referred to as the B Coastal left-wing intellectual Elite

  • 26:05
  • and then on the other side a more common folk that is simply
  • competent minded and down to earth and cares about skills and and success and
  • doesn't care about ivy league degrees and has spokes people like Mr Hanson and
  • has spokes people like Mr he is a farmer has well he is he is uh so on the one
  • hand too I have four tomato plants yeah go ahead on the on the one hand
  • I I see this as connecting to your idea of change as well because presumably the
  • right wants change from this obsolete uh left ruling class but I
  • wonder how if you see a similar culture war of foot at all no I I I see people
  • like him really trying and stretching to construct such an idea but in my view

  • 27:07
  • that's because it doesn't work and they're worried about where all this might go and this is a much for them a
  • much happier story than the one I tell they they don't want to deal with a declining Empire they don't want to deal
  • with a capitalism that doesn't work they want this to be all in the realm of the
  • bad people on the coasts with their Evil elitism versus the men
  • and women of the soil this game has been played by left wiers too this is a very
  • old way of thinking he may not know it but I could give him references if he
  • wants about you know where this game has been played before I don't think the elites whatever that quite means on the
  • coast have the power or the understanding to play the nice role of
  • bad guy that his his construct assigns to them and you know I understand what

  • 28:05
  • he's doing it's all over the place he I'm sure he didn't claim he was the origin of this Insight he repeats it and
  • for me it's it's empty it even if you believed it you'd have to then explain
  • why do we have people on the coast who do what they do say what they say
  • Advocate what you've have to explain it what is there something in the air in California and New York make them
  • attract I mean stop what is this and it it becomes dangerous because
  • if it in the in the in the hands of people less scrupulous than I hope Mr
  • Hansen is this can become you know a rural against Urban an educated against
  • uneducated that that's where this goes in the hands of many and and he will
  • bear responsibility because giving a veneer of respectability to this way of

  • 29:04
  • thinking is cheap in the end no I like to ground what I'm saying in what's
  • actually happening in the economic realities of the United States that you
  • know there are certain for example there are certain industries that are still viable in the
  • United States many Industries aren't why not because
  • capitalists who make these decisions made the decision to
  • relocate their P their businesses overseas or those same capitalists made
  • the decision to automate okay so a whole lot of Industries
  • left and much of the unhappiness of the people in The Middle on the country is
  • because that's what they left from where whereas the industries that
  • still can function for all kinds of reasons because there're service Industries you can't have a service

  • 30:06
  • industry in China serving people in America because this industry has to be where the people are otherwise it
  • doesn't work so we didn't we exported manufacturing we didn't export services
  • with some exceptions the industries that are still viable here high-tech they
  • went to California for all kinds of reasons long ago so they can expand they
  • can hire more everybody can go live you know in San Jose or in the environment
  • but that's not because the however lovely California's climate it's because these are industries that are
  • still viable as leadership Industries in World capitalism located here that
  • leadership by the way is leeching away last week we all got a lesson when
  • deep seek showed us what can be done by those nasty Chinese folks in the way of

  • 31:03
  • the high-tech AI Revolution it's not going to be dominated by the United States that's what that's what the
  • lesson is but that's we're going to watch what what is the story The Hansen
  • of this world are going to tell us about China's arrival they're going to tell us
  • sadly that the Chinese copied a lot of the United States
  • which is true but irrelevant the newcomer always copies
  • the old one when the United States broke from Britain you know what the Britain charged the United States with for the
  • whole 19th century stealing our technology which had its grain of Truth it always does but this sudden there
  • still you know this is oh how awful what you're really revealing is you you don't
  • know anything about your own history or what are you doing it's and becomes cheap and it slides

  • 32:01
  • into well I'll leave that to the audience to figure out where that stuff
  • slides to so I understand the effort to make this a
  • culture war is in my judgment an attempt to distract
  • attention from other dimensions which not only explain the story better but
  • help us understand why that culture War even exists what is its origin its cause
  • otherwise you start with a culture War what is that how are you going to ground
  • that and and by the way I don't know Mr hon but that kind of argument then
  • becomes grounded in stories of of
  • Education the the political complexity of the United States that I've been talking about was not significantly
  • different from the political orientation of my classmates at Harvard Stanford and

  • 33:04
  • Yale so that's supposedly the elite but they were as
  • cruess about the leftwing as most Americans were because they were affected by the same culture war against
  • the left that came out of World War II you know
  • the most famous economics professor at Harvard at my time was a man who with a
  • big reputation named Joseph Schumer you may have heard his name Joseph Schumer had a prize student
  • at Harvard named Paul Sweezy I was hoping you'd say Rick wolf no no Paul
  • Sweezy the the they're older than me I was young just arriving there Paul
  • Sweezy was who himself was a graduate of Harvard who was a member of the Rockefeller

  • 34:02
  • family the right one and so he perfect he's mat Harvard
  • getting his degree comes from the wealthy and he's the air apparent to
  • Joseph shumer at the end of the 1940s Harvard fires
  • him he's teaching already they fire him they're not going to let him replace
  • shum Peter as sh Peter wanted no why
  • because he had become a Marxist in the 1930s as so many had and Harvard under
  • the gun and the pressure had no more backbone then than it has had recently
  • with its other leaders that had dumped when the when the wind politically
  • changed and where did Sweezy go he left Harvard and went to New York City
  • and founded a magazine called the monthly review which still exists using money given to him by

  • 35:07
  • Albert Einstein who wrote the editorial in the first issue of monthly review
  • which was entitled why I am a socialist right all of that all of that
  • that's the culture War but for people to think that culture War didn't come out of the history of this very bizarre
  • so for I I don't as a proposition I don't take it serious as an interesting phenomena of how you
  • avoid this is the continuation of the the taboo on the Marxist or the leftist
  • way of opening up a question it's it's an approach that that will not debate in
  • Europe is quite different then the right has to debate the left it's too hard
  • they can't just dismiss it they try in good American copying try to do

  • 36:01
  • because they Envy what the United States can do to its working class because you can't do it there right Europeans have a
  • National Health Service Europe doesn't allow the death penalty European
  • universities are mostly free yeah you can't do to the working class there and
  • their capitalists are envious but other than that the culture War stuff cannot
  • be pursued there the way it is here because it doesn't have this history you mentioned I mean as as an economist you

  • Did West Coast Elites Cause the LA Wildfire Disaster (Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong?)?
    •
  • 36:34
  • tend to support a lot of your arguments with reference to economics absolutely
  • right and Victor's background at least in part is farming so it was natural for us to talk about the California wildfire
  • disaster because he could at at length explain exactly what's going on with
  • California's water but the way that he accounted for this situation and I bring it up just because it's still quite
.
TRANSCRIPT NAVIGATION
S-01 S-02 S-03 S-04 S-05 S-06 S-07 S-08 S-09 S-10 S-11 S-12 S-13 S-14 S-15
S-16 S-17 S-18 S-19 S-20 S-21 S-22 S-23 S-24 S-25 S-26 S-27 S-28 S-29 S-30
Contents Last S-03 Next S-05
.
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY



Peter Burgess
Useful link:


SITE COUNT Amazing and shiny stats
Copyright © 2005-2021 Peter Burgess. All rights reserved. This material may only be used for limited low profit purposes: e.g. socio-enviro-economic performance analysis, education and training.